Non-Ags game, KRAKATORA

[Darius Poyer]

So this may be odd. since making rein I didn't get any good ideas for adventure games so I started looking into other things. I came across the kongregate unity game-making contest and decided to make one, and it's now complete.




Would be nice to get some feedback on it.
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Poyer/krakatora <-- the game!

[Monsieur OUXX]

Loved the very first scene ( the one pictured here). Reminds me of Another World, or Heart of Darkness.

I'm not sure though how I "unblocked" the main character, because my immediate instinct has been to click on the blue dot, and I'm not sure if the game would have started if I hadn't.

Then it's your typical platformer. It's a pity not all level design is as cool as the first screen. It's a bit repetitive afterwards (to be honest I've stopped playing after the first 2 ennemies -- not because the game is bad but because I'm not really into that type of gameplay).

Good luck!

[Igor Hardy]

Nice art and I envy you being able to do stuff with unity, but to be honest I find the game itself very boring - just another run-of-the-mill platformer. Unless you are keeping the unique gameplay bits for much later in the game, because I've given up after beating several of the "Light Beings".

Sorry to be so indifferent about this game. I really enjoyed rein though, and would love to see more adventure titles from you in the future.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

It's an interesting game, but it needs tighter and more user-friendly controls.  For example, for some reason you cannot change direction when jumping or falling, which makes it unnecessarily difficult to hop between walls.  Second, the jump is very unresponsive generally which leads to a lot of needless backtracking.  Aside from these two issues I like the game overall and think with these mild control improvements you could have an addictive little game.  Perhaps you might liven it up through upgrades that affect jump height, run speed, health, or other things (shots with various properties like freezing enemies, teleporting them away, etc) so you can break up the linear nature of the map with some exploration rewards.

[Darius Poyer]

I though I would end up regretting posting the game here most of all. In reality this is the only place where posting about them game was actually helpful.

I really appreciate all your comments and I do agree with everything that's been said here. The game was developed poorly and on the fly. Because of that I shouldn't be surprised at its reception. The real thing I can take away from this whole effort is that I really need to plan games more thoroughly in the future.
I was trying to build a game around whatever mechanics I could put into the protagonist and because of that the levels didn't get designed ahead of time and the game as a whole kind of fell apart.
There is also a very flawed interaction between the player and the enemies but at this point I really can't be bothered fixing it, although I think I know the problem, id rather move on.

[blueskirt]

Then it's your typical platformer.

just another run-of-the-mill platformer

If you guys played three more minutes you would have discovered that it's a completely different game when more than three enemies are thrown at you. That game requires planning, stealth and evasion, it's totally not your typical platformer.

Back on topic, if I had to improve that game, I would make checkpoint visible, maybe with a differently colored crystal in the background, so I know when I can restart breathing after a difficult moment. Also, keyboard controls really need improvement like ProgZ said, I had to stop at level two, because it was impossible for my keyboard to record Left, Z and X pressed at the same time, making a long jump necessary to progress impossible to complete.

Were it not for that jump, I would have certainly completed it, the stealth and evasion made the gameplay interesting and the story was intriguing.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The game was developed poorly and on the fly. Because of that I shouldn't be surprised at its reception. The real thing I can take away from this whole effort is that I really need to plan games more thoroughly in the future.

I don't think the game is poor and it didn't seem to me like you made it in a hurry.  I actually think it has a lot of potential and you really should invest some time into broadening the scope of the game, particularly by breaking up the linearity of the map with multiple paths, dead-ends, interesting things to discover, and so on.  This is the sort of game people can really get into if it repays their interest with a strong exploration and gameplay model, so I encourage you to keep working on it.  As blueskirt mentioned, making the checkpoints obvious would help and was something I forgot to mention.  Another option would be to allow the player to have 3 gems or something that they can drop at any time that serve as checkpoints, and occasionally they get more as they go so they still have to use some strategy but can also save before difficult sequences if they've kept a reserve gem.

Again, I think this game has a lot of potential or I wouldn't have posted in the first place, so my advice is continue to work on it.

[Anian]

To be honest, after about 15 minutes the game just froze on me, I couldn't move my character while the enemies still moved. Also every now and then, and I'm not sure why exactly, but there was drop in framerate, though that might have something to do with many tabs opened in firefox.

Yeah, as Ouxx mentioned, from the first scene, the variety in scenes went down, just straight black tunnels etc.
Is the the change in light intensity suppose to be a measure of health? Cause it kind of bugged me that I didn't know how much health I had left.

Also I suggest you change the control to something other than Y/Z key, because, you might not know it and you certanly are not the first to do it like that, but in some other countries, Z and Y keys are switched on a keyboard, so it becomes a little harder to play the game. You can just switch it to A S D or X C V instead of Z X C keys.

[moshboy]

I enjoyed what I played of this and really loved the graphical style - it really gave the sense of being in a different world. The controls felt a tad clunky at times but I thought the game mechanics themselves weren't bad.. I enjoyed dashing through walls and into enemies and knocking them about. Definitely could use some more polish. Lots of potential there.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Yeah my post certainly didn't imply that this is a bad game. It's as good as most flash games on the Internet. You just need to work on a few little things (repetitiveness and controls accuracy).

[Igor Hardy]

It's as good as most flash games on the Internet.

That's a compliment?

I think Krakatora is probably better than most, but the sample I played didn't hook me in to play more and blueskirt's "That game requires planning, stealth and evasion" doesn't excite me either, as the same can be said about dozens of good and bad games. So I'm not offering a deeper analysis of how well particular aspects of the game are constructed, but like a casual player who came across it I'm saying the game doesn't attract attention, doesn't stand out, doesn't have have unbelievably smooth controls and it will be normally played through only by hardcore platformer fans (no idea how large is that crowd though).

But as an exercise in mastering Unity it may actually really pay off for you.

[Dualnames]

I just took my 20 minutes on this and really liked it. What only bugged me is that I had too darn programs on, like After Effects, Photoshop, AGS, Skype, Firefox, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, so the game occasionally lagged and froze for a second. I will however check more of it. I really liked what I played so far.

[Chicky]

Lovely game Darius, the controls were a little clunky but i got used to them after a few minutes, changing direction in the air would be nice. I really like the way you've used the engine, the 3D and pixel sharp graphics really compliment one another. I didn't play much as i've got work to do but with a little tweaking this could make a great XBLA/PSN title.

[Darius Poyer]

How to improve Krakatora

Above are a few things I've been thinking of that would improve the game fairly significantly. Different power-ups and a new death system. I would also like different enemies that offer different challenges, like a miner that throws his pickaxe at you, or some close-combat foes.

For level-design I would have needed more variety in pretty much every aspect, more ways to approach encounters, giving the player different power-ups and maybe even ways to cause damage to foes using the environment (pushing rocks from heights etc.). I would also have like to incorporate more plant-life and doodads in general, crates and lamps, things like that.

Finally, more save-points and perhaps better handling of story in general. I'd like to have some animated cut-scenes so I could explore the dark-ones more as a race, in small ways and help give the player a clearer idea of his role as a god.

That covers it in broad strokes I think. There are many more issues that are small but significant, id like to keep it general though.


Game-design is a terribly complicated subject I need to get better at, maybe re-making Krakatora into a decent game is a good way to get closer to understanding it all. Weather or not I will take all these ideas into a new game is not something I'm sure about just yet, but I wanted to share my ideas on the subject never the less.

[straydogstrut]

Unity is brilliant, I used it for my dissertation (now that was a bad game.. *shudders* ). If I wasn't working on other projects, i'd probably start fiddling around in Unity again.

I agree with most of what the others said: it's not a bad game and there's lots of potential there. I think your last post shows that - you have lots of ideas for things (and lovely art btw) so you're limited only by your imagination and willingness to improve it.

I think the controls are the main issue really, jumping just isn't very smooth and I personally found it very hard to pull off the jump up wall and dash. I would be jumping up a wall, holding the right arrow, then press dash to fly off to the left and break the wall but if I was too slow (which I am, generally!) to take my finger off the right key I would fall short and miss the ledge on the other side. I agree, being able to change direction in mid-air would help a lot, but also what about zig-zag jumping up walls? so jumping at a wall and pressing jump again bounces you off it, then repeat on the other side all the way up?

Spitting didn't seem very effective (maybe I ran out of spit??) but I like the idea and being able to hide from enemies is a nice twist. Maybe have the eye piece change colour to reflect your health (if it did, I didn't notice, sorry). Overall the graphics are lovely, and can only get better with more colourful pickups and signposting.

I hope you keep working on this, it has a lot of potential=)

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The shots were extremely low range and arc downward which is part of the reason why it wasn't particularly useful, though it gave me the impression that the goal was more avoidance than conflict.  I suppose that each of these upgrades could alter the way the projectile functions in addition to its effect, for instance:

1.  With the flame you could have it launch an explosive shot that has short range but when it hits the ground blows up and burns an area around it for a few seconds, good for large, slow enemies and vines and things barring your way.

2.  With the rock it could literally launch a rock that hits the ground and rolls, gaining momentum and being able to bowl over most small enemies as well as break certain barriers.

3.  The sludge you could have fire in five directions and create puddles that slow or stop enemies.  He might also be able to use it on slippery surfaces and walls to give him something to stick to between jumps.

4.  The poison is the toughest one for me to think of a creative use for, but I'm sure you will .

[tzachs]

Played it for a bit, and thought it was real nice, very polished and had a good atmosphere.
I didn't feel like the controls were clunky at all, it felt smooth to me, maybe with the exception of the aforementioned spitting which is too low.
Also, I think that you should allow jumping between walls. It appears that you've planned some of the puzzles around that limitation, but it was very annoying so maybe you should re-think that, and if you must do it for a specific puzzle you can introduce a new type of wall that can't be climbed on.

Other than that, I guess that my main problem was with the level design (though I haven't played a lot, so maybe it was because I was still in the tutorial). I found it way too repetitive, and that didn't hook me to keep on playing.
Maybe you should take a look (if you haven't already) at the Level Design Workshop thread in TigSource.
It has some really interesting ideas, and could probably help you out.